For one thing, it looks like a lot of time and care has gone into this thing from a design standpoint. This isn’t a cheap clone of iOS, the way Windows is a cheap clone of Mac OS, the way Android is a cheap clone of iOS. This is something very different. Still touch-based, still simple and clean (maybe even more simple and clean than iOS), but very different from anything Apple is doing. It even looks almost completely different.
And there’s documentation. Design principles. Human Interface Guidelines. The whole nine yards. They’re putting the hours in over there.
But does it work? Of that, I’m still not sure. I think of projects like Courier that demo very well but upon further inspection make no practical sense, and I worry that what we’ve been shown so far will be better on paper, in short video clips, or at a sales demo than in actual use. Seems like a lot of screen real estate gets wasted; seems like a lot of swiping to off screen content; seems less intuitive to operate for someone who doesn’t know where to tap or swipe.
But I’m going to reserve my real judgement on this one, despite my natural tendency to immediately assume anything Microsoft produces will be crap. The level of thought that appears to have gone into designing this thing suggests that some of the real talent at Microsoft has finally been allowed to float to the top.
All of this could be moot, anyway, if you believe what most people would have you believe, that Android already has the mobile game won by a mile, that even Apple will only have a small percentage of market share in a few years, after the massive Android takeover occurs any minute now.
But you don’t really believe that nonsense, do you?
The way I see it, it’s still a wide open field. Apple will be stuck in a war with the carriers for a while still (many will not want to give up that precious control they love so much, and Steve Jobs is, well Steve Jobs), and that will leave a large chunk of the market up for grabs. Right now, Android is mopping up that market. But for how long? So far they’ve been competing mostly with dead Windows Mobile 6 and non-smart phones. They don’t seem to be fostering long-term loyal customers, the kind of people who stick to one platform for years and years on principle. HP has WebOS, which will most likely go nowhere, but you never know. RIM keeps making the mistake of trying to expand to consumers and is meanwhile ceding ground on the business front to Apple.
Microsoft looks like it’s coming very late to the party with an OS that will likely be under featured on launch. But hey, Apple does that on a regular basis and manages to pull it off, so I wouldn’t write MS out of this story just yet.
